‘Inside UVA’: Outgoing Dean Reflects on the People Who Make the Law School Great

Jim Ryan, president of the University of Virginia: And what about academic leadership? Did you grow up hoping you would be the dean of a law school someday?

Risa Goluboff, dean of the UVA School of Law: I did not. I did not. I could throw the question back at you and all your capacities.

Ryan: Hello, everyone. I’m Jim Ryan, president of the University of Virginia, and I’d like to welcome all of you to another episode of “Inside UVA.” This podcast is a chance for me to speak with some of the amazing people at the University and to learn more about what they do and who they are. My hope is that listeners will ultimately have a better understanding of how UVA works and a deeper appreciation of the remarkably talented and dedicated people who make UVA the institution it is. 

I’m joined today by Dean Risa Goluboff, the 12th and first female dean of the University of Virginia School of Law. Risa is a renowned legal historian whose scholarship focuses on the historical development of American constitutional and civil rights law. She’s a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the American Law Institute, and chair of the advisory board for UVA’s Karsh Institute of Democracy. In addition to serving as dean, Risa has taught at the School of Law for over 20 years with additional faculty appointments at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African American and African Studies, the Department of History and the Miller Center for Public Affairs. Prior to joining the Law School faculty, Risa clerked for Judge Guido Calabresi of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and Justice Stephen Breyer of the United States Supreme Court.

Risa is an extraordinary leader and accomplished scholar, a devoted partner and mother and a dear friend. Now in her final semester as dean, we are fortunate to have her on this podcast. Risa, thanks so much for being here.

Goluboff: Thank you for having me. I have to tell you, Jim, this is a bucket list item for me before I stepped down, and I didn’t even tell you that when the invitation came, I was really delighted and honored. 

Ryan: Well, I’m really glad you said yes. So we have a ton to cover in a little time – I want to start at the present. So you are in your eighth year as dean. You’re in the final semester. You are officially a short-timer. How are you feeling about that?

Goluboff: I feel bittersweet about that. I am going to be sad to step down. There are so many aspects of this job that I love, and especially, all the people I get to meet, doing things like this, so I’m going to miss all that. And I’m going to miss spending my day with people really, actually, you know, I’m an extrovert and scholars are – it’s a more introverted kind of job. I love being a scholar, but I will miss all the people. 

But I’m excited. I think it’s a good time for me to step down. I feel like I’ve accomplished a lot, and the school is in a good place, and I’m ready to do something different. And I’m also really excited for my successor, Leslie Kendrick, who, you know, we’ve both known for decades. She was one of my very first research assistants as, when she was a student here. So, I feel good all around. But I don’t know exactly how I’ll feel, you know, on July 1.

Ryan: Yeah. So you talked a little bit about what you’ll miss. Are there one or two things that you’ll miss the most? And what will you miss the least?

Goluboff: I think the things that I’ll miss the most are the feeling that the people of this institution – all of them – are my people. I mean, they’ve always been my people. But right after I was named dean, I was walking through the halls with my son, and he was 9 at the time. And we passed by these two students, and I said, “Hi!” And he said, “Are those your students?” And I said, “No,” because I hadn’t taught them. And then I paused, and I said, “Actually, yes, they’re all my students now.” I feel that way about the students and I feel that way about our alumni. 

I used to have sort of “my alumni,” who I taught, and now they’re all “my alumni.” Just that feeling of being such a critical part of this wonderful place that people love, and, you know, there’s just all this affection and devotion for this place that comes to me. I think you probably experience, you know, some of that, too, or probably more of that, but that, you know, you get identified with this institution that you love, that I love, and you get to be an ambassador for it in all these different kinds of ways and you get to be the recipient of all of this, you know, good feeling that all these students, faculty, staff, alumni have for it.

Ryan: Right. OK, that’s what you’ll miss the most. What will you what will you miss the least?

Goluboff: I think – well, I don’t know. There’s always so much to do, and not enough hours in the day and the feeling that I could be doing more. That there’s always another email in my inbox. That there’s always more I want to do that. There’s always someone waiting for me to give an answer to somebody, that feeling of responsibility, that feeling of obligation. 

You know, I want to do all those things, but I just wish I could do them all, and you can’t do everything and, you know, just always feeling one step behind, that there’s always more to do. I won’t miss that particular anxiety.

Ryan: Right. I know the feeling.

Goluboff: It’s very hard. And, you know, you have to accept it right there. You cannot do it all, all the time. But for people like us, we like to do it all, all the time. 

Ryan: You never get to the end of your to-do list.

Goluboff: There is never an end to the to-do list. That’s the thing. And there’s something satisfying about the end to it. Right. And you never get that. So I don’t know if I’ll get it even on June 30. So we’ll see. I’ll let you know.

Ryan: So you have had a spectacular run as dean. I’m wondering, are there one or two accomplishments that you’re most proud of, or most grateful for?

Goluboff: There are a bunch of things I’m proud of for sure. 

I’ll mention one that is a very specific thing, which is our Roadmap Scholars Program. So this is a pipeline program that we’ve created for first-generation, low-income college students. It is a soup-to-nuts preparation program. It’s not just “get you in the pipeline.” It’s “give you a roadmap for how to get into and succeed in a at a law school like UVA.” It is fully resourced and gives legal education, education about applications, education about the legal profession – it really provides all of the kinds of resources, not just financial ones, that under-resourced students need to succeed. There isn’t another program out there that’s as generous, and, I think, as thoughtful and as comprehensive as ours. So I’m really proud of that we just are in the process of admitting our third cohort, so they’re still very young. But we’ve now admitted someone to the law school program, the first one. I don’t know whether she’ll come yet or not. But that’s – I’m very proud of that. 

I would say more generally, I – you know, there’s going to be a theme probably to the extent that you’re asked me about the Law School and the deanship, like the Law School, we’re not the Engineering School, we don’t have labs. We don’t have big infrastructure investments. The Law School is all about the people. That’s true on the faculty side, as true on the student side. So what gives me joy are all the people and what I’m proud of are all the people. So I’m really proud of the faculty we’ve hired. I’m really proud of what our faculty have accomplished over the last eight years. And I’m exceedingly proud of our students. 

I think these have been a really challenging eight years. Partly, Charlottesville, partly COVID, partly political polarization, war – I mean, really challenging. And our students, you know, no one’s perfect. But our students are pretty amazing. And they’re really varied in their backgrounds and their views. And they work really hard to have real human connections with each other, and to work through all of these hard things going on in the world, which, you know, you can’t be buffered from. The law is engaged in all of those things, and they’re – everyone’s part of the world, the Law School is part of the world. But they work really hard to talk to each other and to listen to each other, and I’m really proud of them. 

Ryan: So going back to the faculty for just a second, you had a pretty famous hiring spree that caught the attention of the law school world. Can you describe that a little bit for those who weren’t following as closely as I was? 

Goluboff: Sure. So over the last eight years, we hired 34 faculty members. We have a faculty of about 100. So that’s a third of our faculty. We hired 20 tenure-line faculty, and most of those were hired in a three-year period during and right after COVID. And there were a lot of other law schools who were not at universities who were not hiring at that time, because they were in some financial challenges. They were facing financial challenges, and we were in a privileged position of being in a really good financial place. We’re conservative stewards of our resources. And we were able to hire, and we did. 

The Twitterverse kind of went crazy. They compared me to Nick Saban. They compared me to the New York Mets. They said, you know, “There aren’t any law professors left to hire, you hired them all.” And, “There’s no more law schools. They’re all going to close. You’re like the Amazon or the Barnes and Noble of, of law schools.” And so it was really fun. 

Somebody, actually, when I announced that I was stepping down, I don’t have it to hand, but somebody, when I announced that I was stepping down, another dean of a law school wrote me a little poem, in which he basically was like, saying,” I’m stepping down because I’ve hired everyone.” It rhymes; I don’t remember the rhyme, but that’s what he was like, “Oh, well, you’re done. So I guess it’s time to go.”

Ryan: So you mentioned some of the challenges that your students have faced, but you faced those challenges with them. What was the most challenging issue or period of time during your deanship, would you say?

Goluboff: I’ve it’s hard to choose between two, I would say. The white supremacist Unite the Right rallies, protests, violence in 2017 was definitely one. I mean, it was a cataclysmic and traumatic event for the University and Charlottesville and for our whole community. So that was challenging. 

And then as you know, I chaired the Dean’s Working Group, which organized the response for the whole university. So I had only been dean for a year at that time, and I really spent that whole next school year working on that. And that was very challenging. 

And that year felt long, but it really didn’t feel as long as the COVID time. So, you know, COVID was different than Unite the Right. It was a brief crisis in the moment, but it had a really complex response, that took a long time to unravel. And COVID was an ongoing crisis that kept changing and demanding new responses to new problems that it kept raising. So it was, you know, maybe you’re the runner, not me, but it’s possible that one was a sprint, and one was a marathon. But COVID, I think, turned out to be a Tough Mudder with no end, right? You’re crawling through the mud, you’re climbing up the thing. You don’t know what the next thing is going to be. And so there was a stamina to the COVID one that was really hard. 

But I think the responding to the white supremacists was, you know, very emotional. I’m Jewish. I was the first Jewish dean as well as the first woman dean. And so, you know, this is my community in so many different ways. And I think the University really had to think a lot about how to respond and what this would mean for us going forward.

Ryan: Well, the work that you did with the Dean’s Working Group was fantastic, and I know it was a hard assignment, but the entire University benefited from it. So thank you.

Goluboff: Thank you.

Ryan: So those of us who are associated with the Law School know it is – or we like to believe, but I believe it’s true – a special place, and that it’s different from other law schools. And I’m sure you talk about this a fair bit. I’m curious how you would describe the Law School and what makes it such a special place.

Goluboff: So I definitely agree – you won’t be surprised, I totally agree that the Law School is really special. 

You know, it’s interesting, we just had our Admitted Student Open House. And what I tell the prospective students there is, you know, “Everybody tells you their students are happy, and it’s a collegial place and all of this. But I’m glad you’re here, because you can actually see it in action and when you come, you can, you can see that we really are special.” 

And I do think that what makes us special is our community. It is a community of lots of different kinds of people who come from lots of different places, who are all ambitious, in the best sense of the word, they all want to do their best, they are spurred on to excellence, they are looking for rigor, and they are rigorous in their studies, but they’re doing all of that not at the expense of anyone else. They’re doing it together collaboratively, collegially as part of a community that is inclusive and supportive as the baseline for being rigorous, and challenging and excellent, and where you’re going to hear lots of different viewpoints. 

I remember so acutely my first UVA interview, for this job – I got this job to be a faculty member, and that’s what I took away. Like, “These people are nice, and these people are smart, and these people have all different thoughts, and they are going to make me a better scholar and a better teacher and a better person.” And that’s true for our faculty. And it’s true for our students. 

I think part of it is Charlottesville. The University of Virginia is the central institution in the lives of our students. And it’s the central institution in the lives of our faculty and our staff. And that means people are here, and they’re committed, and they’re going to have you to their homes, and they’re going to be invested in your life. And that’s true for everybody. And I don’t think that’s true everywhere. 

I think it makes our students happier, and we build on that, right? It’s not just happenstance – “Oh, we’re in Charlottesville, and now everyone’s collegial.” We have all kinds of programming and all kinds of structures that we put in place to reinforce that we’re a real community and that we see each other as full human beings, and that that’s part of what enables us to have the hard conversations and to learn together. 

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention softball; you know, that softball is important. But softball is important in and of itself, and because it stands in for work-life balance, and, you know, socializing as part of your life and having real relationships. 

So, I don’t know that wasn’t really succinct. But I do think what makes us special is the people and the community. And I think students who come here come knowing that, so they’re self-selected, then we reinforced that through all kinds of structures and programs. Then you go out in the world – and you know this more than anyone as a UVA alum – those are relationships you have for the rest of your life. And they’re just, it’s beautiful. Yeah, it’s very special.

Ryan: I agree. So let’s step back for a second. You are originally from New York. You received an undergraduate degree at Harvard, your law degree at Yale, and your Ph.D. in history from Princeton. So you’re obviously a slacker and not at all a talented student. How did you end up at the UVA School of Law as a faculty member?

Goluboff: That’s a great question. Well, let me answer two ways. 

So first, that makes me sound very Northeast. But my work, historically, I’m a historian of the civil rights movement and social movements, was always in the South. I’d spent a bunch of time in the South before – though my husband, Rich Schragger, who, you know, he’s from New Jersey, he’d never been, because the South was totally new to him. But we went on the teaching market together; we were looking for jobs together, and we applied very broadly all across the country. We had a bunch of options and as I was saying before, I have a very vivid memory – You have these half-hour interviews for different law schools, and going to all of these, and at some of them, the people are lovely and nice, but they don’t really ask you anything hard about your work, or they all have the same thing to say. And in some of them, they think that being rigorous is being mean, and that they can’t also be nice, and that’s not my way. 

And I have a vivid memory, I could tell you who the people were in the room in this hotel room, from UVA, where they were warm, and lovely, and generous and embracing and super smart, and all asked different questions. Even by the time I left the room, I had new ideas about my project, and I walked out and I thought, “That was different from everyone else.” 

And Rich – we didn’t see each other the whole day, we’re going all these half-hour interviews – he had exactly the same response. Then when we came, you know, for our interviews, that was true yet again. Then we came back for recruiting visit after we were given our offers, and after we’d accepted, then we came for recruiting, then we came to look for houses, and Rip Verkerke, who was the chair of the committee, organized a soccer game for Rich to play in. And his wife, Tracy, who’s a dancer and I’m a dancer, organized for there to be a dance class for me to go to, and we said, “You know, Rip, we already said yes. You don’t have to recruit us anymore.” And he said, “Oh, I’m not recruiting anymore. This is friendship.” 

And it was just like, that was how we felt from the first moment. This is a place to thrive and be challenged and supported, and after that it was it was an easy call.

Ryan: Yeah. So when you went to law school, did you know you weren’t going to go the academic route? Did you go to, you went to law school before you became a graduate student in history? Or did you do it simultaneously? Or was it the other way around?

Goluboff: So I did it sort of simultaneously. 

I was a senior in college, and I had spent my college career studying history and sociology. I loved the part of the semester where I was writing papers. I really loved the academic enterprise. But I’d also been very involved in public service and didn’t want to be in an ivory tower. I really thought I wanted to be a lawyer and a public interest lawyer. I was really frustrated because I’ve never had to choose between these things before. I did my coursework, and I did my extracurriculars. Now here I am, suddenly, everyone’s like, “Well, you have to choose; you either go to law school, or you go to grad school.” I was like, “I don’t think I’m gonna choose.”

So I applied to both from college, but I had no concept of how they would combine. I had never heard of a law professor; I didn’t know what law professors did. I didn’t have any access to that world. And I thought, you know, if you’d asked me, then I would be, say, a public interest lawyer working at – you know, I spent one summer in law school at Florida Rural Legal Aid, doing migrant farm worker advocacy work. And I might teach at a local community college and do oral histories of the farm workers and teach history and do public interest work. That’s not a career path. And, you know, maybe someone else will figure out how to do that. 

But by the time I was partway through law school, it was clear that there was this other career path of being a law professor, where, even though you get to have the life of the mind and the academic, scholarly endeavors that a history professor gets, you’re also much more in the world. Your students are going to be lawyers. You can be an expert. You can sign amicus briefs. You’re just, you know, you’re having an impact through your work much more directly. And it was clear that being a law professor was a way for me to merge these two desires to have an impact on the world and to be a scholar by being a law professor. It was such the right path for me. I have not looked back from that. 

Ryan: And what about academic leadership? Did you grow up hoping you would be the dean of a law school someday?

Goluboff: I did not. I did not. I could throw the question back at you and all your capacities. 

But no, I – you know, I’m a really happy scholar. I love teaching. I’ve loved the students. I love every part of being a professor. And I didn’t really think I wanted to be in academic leadership. There came a moment where there was going to be a dean search and there was a question of, you know, who would our next leader be? And I started thinking about that, and I love this place. And, and I started thinking, I’ve gained so much from it, and I love it. And it’s an institution I want to give back to. And so to me, it was a service to this small school in this university, as opposed to “I want to be a dean.” 

It’s funny, because when I was thinking about and trying to decide if I wanted to throw my hat in the ring, I had a conversation with an ex-dean from another institution. And he was saying, “Well, I don’t think anyone should be dean, who doesn’t want to just be a dean, I don’t think it’s a good answer to want to be dean at UVA, you should just want to be a dean.” And I was like, “I’m not sure what I think about that,” and by the end of the process, like, “I think you’re totally wrong. I disagree100%. I don’t want to be a dean; I want to be a dean here!” Because this is my institution. 

And I, I love it. I also have thoughts about how to make it the best version of itself. And that’s why, you know, and I will say, I will add, thinking about having an impact on the world, and living a life of the mind and having an impact, right, this was a good next step for me. This enables you to shape a whole institution and enable scholars to do their best work and enable students to go out in the world and have great careers. So it felt like a good – it’s a little different balance between those two pieces. But a new, exciting one. 

Ryan: So you have also been active outside of the Law School. We talked a little bit about your work on the Dean’s Working Group. But last year, President Biden appointed you to the Permanent Committee for the Oliver Wendell Holmes Devise. Now I’m sure everyone knows exactly what that is, but for the one or two people who don’t, can you explain what that is and what you do?

Goluboff: I can. I can’t believe there’s anyone who doesn’t know it. But OK. No, Oliver Wendell Holmes was a very famous jurist, a Supreme Court justice, and he left a bequest to the United States government, his Devise – that’s a technical term for his bequest. It was determined a long time ago, actually it sat for a long time it was not used. 

Then it was determined that it’d be used to fund a series of histories of the Supreme Court of the United States. Over the last number of decades, a number of those have been written. There are still more that can be written, but they’ve been written. So this committee is basically the editorial committee that decides when is the volume going to get written, who will be the author of the volume, and supervises the whole process of writing these histories. So there are four people on the committee, and I’m one of them. And that’s what we do. 

Ryan: So your other board role is being chair of the Karsh Board. This is the Karsh Institute of Democracy. Can you talk a little bit about that role and the institute itself? 

Goluboff: Yeah, so that role is very close to my heart. As you know, Martha and Bruce Karsh are – Martha is a graduate of College (of Arts & Sciences) and Law School. And Bruce is a Law grad. And they met here and married afterwards. Actually, not afterwards; they met here and married. They were the first $50 million donors to the Law School; they were the kickoff for our capital campaign. They’re amazing people. 

As part of their gift to the Law School, we created a Karsh Center for Law and Democracy, which is a law-related program that does work on the relationship, obviously, between law and democracy. They, after our gift, they then decided with you that they wanted to make a much larger gift to promote democracy at the University level, and to integrate into a single institute all of the many democracy-related programs, schools, activities that go on at the University – the Karsh Center at the Law School being one of them, but there being lots and lots of others. 

The institute is in the business of understanding, defending, invigorating democracy, and it does so by bringing to bear the enormous intellectual resources that we have here at the University under the magnificent leadership of Melody Barnes. I was the inaugural vice chair, which was a real honor for me to be part of that from the very beginning. And now to be chair, it’s just such a pleasure.

Ryan: So, last two questions, and they’re related. The first is, like all deans, you will have a one-year sabbatical once you step down in July. I wonder if you have any plans yet that you can share about how you’re going to spend your time? 

Goluboff: Yeah, so at the Law School, our tradition is for the ex-dean to take their sabbatical elsewhere – I don’t know if that’s a tradition elsewhere in the University, but certainly at the Law School – to give the new dean the opportunity to spread their wings without the ex-dean being there. And so, Professor Schragger and I, Rich and I, will go to New York and we will be visitors at NYU. My family is in New York and his in New Jersey, and our kids will both be in college in the Northeast next year. We are going to be empty-nesters for the first time next year, as will you. And so we’re excited to be on an adventure at the same time our kids are on an adventure. And I’m excited to be on an adventure, because I think I will definitely have some withdrawal from this job, and so having new things to do well be exciting. 

Ryan: That sounds very fun. So longer term, have you thought about what is next? And maybe you haven’t decided? Are you thinking you’ll just return to being a member of the law faculty? Or would you like to continue at some point in any way, in academic leadership?

Goluboff: I am very excited to return to the law faculty. I really – I love the teaching. I’ve done some teaching as the dean, but not as much as I would like. And I love the research and writing. And again, I’ve done some of that as a dean, but not as much as I would like. So I am excited to come back and teach and research. I have some projects in mind. So we’ll see. We’ll see how those go. 

Ryan: Right, well the Law School is very lucky to have you.

Goluboff: Thank you. This has been really wonderful, Jim. 

Ryan: Yeah, no, thank you. And congratulations. You really have had a spectacular run as dean.

Goluboff: Thank you. And it’s been really amazing to be dean with you as president. That’s been fun and wonderful to watch you be an amazing president.

Aaryan Balu, co-producer of “Inside UVA”: “Inside UVA” is a production of WTJU 91.1 FM and the Office of the President at the University of Virginia. “Inside UVA” is produced by Jaden Evans, Aaryan Balu, Mary Garner McGehee and Matt Weber. Special thanks to Maria Jones and McGregor McCance.

Our music is “Turning to You” from Blue Dot Sessions. 

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